and the pain's alright
by Alanabloom
Summary: Contains spoilers for season three finale. Me, working through Piper feelings. "No guilt. That's your rule. Stick to it. You are done feeling guilty you refuse to feel guilty you will not SURVIVE feeling guilty."


_A/n: This started out as a kind of frantic, half angry response to season three, with the sole purpose being me working out my anger at Piper and my fervent desire to see her suffer, but luckily it also evolved into me trying to work through Piper's arc and where it might go from here._

 _ **Warning:** Very evocative of self-harm __  
_

* * *

_Got a tattoo that said "2gether thru life"_  
 _Carved in your name with my pocket knife_  
 _And you wonder when you wake up, will it be alright?_  
 _Feels like there's something broken inside_

 _Got a tattoo and the pain's alright_  
 _Just want a way of keeping you inside_

 _-_ "Ink" by Coldplay

* * *

It's like a living thing, these white words etched in your forearm, pulsing pulsing _pulsing_ and demanding attention you do _not_ have time to give. You're too busy for this. You have responsibilities. You have a job to do.

When Stella first finished the tattoo, your first thought hadn't been the words, or the way they make you seem like a piss poor, trying-too-hard prison gangbanger.

Instead, you'd thought that the white really is kind of ugly.

Even now, fully healed, it looks like scar tissue.

* * *

You don't stop. What happened changes nothing.

People whisper a little more now, maybe, but they stop as soon as you look at them. They're scared. They do what they're told. That's what matters.

It's better doing it alone, not sharing the command. No one above you in the hierarchy. Alex had judged you, judged all this, but whatever whatever _whatever._ Her mistake was not being in charge, having people with power over her.

This power is all yours. It's what you wanted. You're good at it.

The money is coming back. You've figured out how to increase output, even working with Neri and her friends. You're projecting growth, and even splitting with Red, with Cal, with all the girls, you're doing just fine.

You're good at this. It's all you think about.

Except for when you accidentally catch a glimpse of the tattoo. Fifty times a day it turns itself into a foolish, idiotic neon sign and for just a _second_ your chest feels like it's going to explode.

You shut it down. Close your eyes and banish the images and then curse yourself for tattooing your goddamn _arm_ , where you can't hide from it.

The first tattoo, the fish one. Alex didn't give it to you but she was there, holding your hand and teasingly calling you a badass.

You hid _her_ tattoo away, where your eyes can't find it not matter how hard they try.

* * *

Alex told you once where tattoos hurt the most. Ribcage was on the list, so that's where you start marking yourself.

You kept Stella's tattoo gun, and the first thing you do is start keeping tally, every day since. Even if there isn't time for something more elaborate, you can always find a few minutes to sneak away and add the mark, counting the distance. There is always time for a few seconds of searing pain before you shut it down.

One day you write the song titles from Alex's nonexistent mix, without really thinking about why. It's hard to write from the angle, and the letters probably come out shaky and uneven, but the look isn't the point anymore. You don't think enough about the future for permanence to matter, you just need something to run your fingers over when you accidentally look at your forearm. You need to outnumber the white ink. The fish didn't stand a chance, by itself.

* * *

 _Trust No Bitch._

Jesus Christ.

Alex never saw it, but you think she would have laughed her ass off.

Or maybe not, not anymore. Maybe she would have stared at your skin and given you _that look_ again, the one you keep Not Thinking about. Maybe she would have just walked away, shaking her head over yet another thing making it impossible for her to recognize you.

* * *

No guilt. That's _your_ rule. Stick to it.

You are done feeling guilty you refuse to feel guilty you will _not survive_ feeling guilty.

* * *

 _But_.

It's on

your fucking

 _arm_.

It's the dead of summer and it has you wearing long sleeves but the fabric may as well be see through. You know what's there. You can't run from it. Sometimes you're tempted to take the black ink and scribble it away, right out in the open. It isn't the threat of SHU that stops you, it's the knowledge that it won't help. You could cut your goddamn arm off and you'd still remember every time you looked at the stump.

So you add more words to your ribcage, _her_ words. You read the old letters for the first time in forever to find them, and sometimes you pick at the scabs, don't let them heal, trying to make them the more insistent presence.

All the while you are carrying on. You are running things, you are ordering and threatening and in some cases, cutting people loose. You aren't feeling guilty you wont' you _can't._

Once you're in a bathroom stall when you hear Boo and Lorna talking about you.

"...nothin' she can do about it, unless she wants Chapman to send her down the hill like she did the hot dingo chick. I'm telling you. Fuckin' Tin Man psycho bitch." Boo says it half-amused, half-derogatory.

"Why Tin Man?" Lorna sounds clueless. "Thought she'd be the wizard in the whole operation."

"First of all, the wizard had no real power, moron. She's _Tin Man_ because, you know. No heart."

Sweetly, Lorna protests, "Aw, I don't buy it. Chapman was always one of the good ones?"

"You fuckin' kidding me? Did you see her last month? Did she even give a single shit about what happened to - "

You burst out of the stall at that moment, stone faced, and it's gratifying that they both stiffen and turn pale.

Lips stretching into a cold, dead smile, you calmly approach them. "Don't let me interrupt," you intone, hollow and dangerous. At this point you can almost recognize this voice as yours. You lower the volume to a hiss. "If that was _really_ something you want to fucking say."

Nervously, Lorna starts backign away, tugging on the edge of Boo's tank top. "We were just leavin'."

"Yeah," you agree smoothly, still holding Boo's gaze. "That's what I was going to say. That you're _leaving_. As in, you're out." You manipulate your face into another smile. "Bye bye."

Boo's eyes flare and her face tightens and her hands curl but she just turns and follows Lorna out. She's seen what you can do.

You wait until you're sure they're gone to stumble back into the stall and vomit until your sides ache.

* * *

It starts keeping you awake all night, in actual physical pain, like that tattoo is made of veins trying to strain their way out, the blood pulsing pulsing pulsing with _you know what you did_.

You don't like to touch it, usually, but one exhausted night when it's hurting too much to sleep you let your fingers skim the very edge of the _N_ and are surprised when it's not hot to the touch.

Stella said it was something to remember her by, but you don't even really remember what she looked like anymore. The tattoo does not make your think of her pressing a needle against you in the chapel, of the way kissing her always felt like a surprise because you never learned to recognize her taste, or even of the triumphant swell of power when you sent her away to max.

Instead it makes you think of blood that still isn't completely gone from the boards in the greenhouse floor, and everything you did to put it there.

* * *

 _The alarm goes off and you have to stuff the tattoo gun into the front of your pants and lay down in the chapel. No one comes for you, but the sound keeps blaring much, much longer than usual. Later you hear vague, giddy rumblings of the dismantled fence and cool lake water, but it all sounds pathetic and you aren't jealous to miss it._

 _You're starting to think about contraband, that maybe you spent too much on Stella. There must be more, you may need more for someone else, so you're in the early stages of a search when the alarm sounds, yet again. It's over quickly this time, but a light follows and you sigh impatiently and head back to your bunk._

 _People are looking at you, wide eyed and whispering. Your lips curl into a sneer. Good. You gave them plenty to talk about. It makes you feel badass. And powerful._

 _The count comes and goes with mostly unfamiliar COs and you don't stop to wonder why. The mood around you is subdued, and it's hard to imagine that_ not _having something to do with you._

 _Yoga Jones is the one to come up to you in the cafeteria, awkward and sympathetic. "You holding up okay, Chapman?"_

 _For a moment, you can't think of what she might mean, but then assume she must have heard about Stella. You give a pragmatic shrug. "She got what was coming to her."_

 _Yoga physically draws back, expression shocked.. "Wh...what?"_

 _"You should pass that along," you continue blithely. "Tell the others, I don't fuck around."_

 _Now she's backing away, stricken and nervous. "You...had something to do with...with that?"_ _  
_

_"She's lucky max is all she got," you say, meaninglessly. You have to fight an old, dulled urge to cringe._

 _"Max?" Yoga just looks confused now. "Who are you talking about?"_

 _"Stella...wait, who are you talking about?"_

 _"Vause."_

 _A current zips through your bones. Something bad. "What?"_

 _Yoga is regretting this. She hadn't intended to be the informant. "I'm sorry. I thought you knew..."_

 _Alex had to have been at count. You would have noticed if she wasn't._

 _Except._

 _Had you even looked over? Even once?_

 _Your new, dangerous voice comes back to you. " Tell_ _me_."

 _"One of the new COs attacked her in the greenhouse."_

 _Black Cindy is wandering by. She stops to gossip. "Shit, I heard he knocked her ass out with his flashlight and then started wailing on her. The one who found her, the crazy old white lady -" To Yoga, she adds, "The_ other _one...she say he was going after her with a shovel when she saw it. Shovel to the fuckin' NECK. A motherfuckin' CO - "_

 _"Is she alive?" It wrenches out of you, too quiet, because Cindy doesn't even pause."_

 _"- how we supposed to sleep at night - "_

 _"IS SHE ALIVE?" You grab a fistful of Yoga's shirt just because she's closest. You're shaking and scared of yourself because of how badly you want to hurt them._

 _"I don't know," Yoga blurts out._

 _"Didn't nobody see them take her out," Cindy adds._

 _You release the older woman and stumble away, out of the cafeteria and out of bounds and into the greenhouse. The blood is fresh. It's everywhere._

 _The tattoo on your arm is burning you and for just a second you feel everything. You step out of yourself and look at the last few months and you remember fresh what you are._

 _you bitch you selfish bitch you piece of shit you fuck you manipulative cunt_

* * *

No guilt. That was the rule. You're still playing by it.

(You broke the rule for maybe sixty seconds in that greenhouse, the first day, thirty-four black ink tally marks ago, you howled like a jackal until you realized it would kill you. You are guilty in too many ways, and all the ones you'd been ignoring hadn't actually gone anywhere. It is a grenade sitting in your stomach and you have to keep the pin in or you'd be in pieces.)

* * *

You remember reading Poe for the first time in middle school, and you think about it a lot now because that damned tattoo on your arm is your Tell Tale Heart. You are calm and collected and no one would suspect you of falling apart, but the tattoo screams at you more and more until you do not have a moment's piece.

You add more words to your skin, song lyrics, wanting them to sing, to drown out the unbearable other one ( _i feel like i wouldn't like me if i met me i feel like you wouldn't like me if you met me_ ) but they're too quiet.

And it's so damn loud.

* * *

By the time you are forty-six tally marks away from the day the tattoo never shuts up.

Your skin is slick and feverish. From infection, probably, but you don't tell anyone so no one notices. But you're dizzy and off balance while you sit in the warehouse, hands clammy on the silky fabric.

You look at the white ink on your arm and feel utterly foolish. It's yelling again. It wants you to break your rule.

 _Trust no bitch!_

 _You're the reason she was here!_

 _And you threw her away!_

 _You didn't listen!_

 _You probably killed her!_

Your fingers are clumsy as they work themselves into the metal scissors they stay chained to the desk, but you manage and you press the blade down and drag it across the tattoo. You are calm and methodical. As always. No one looks up. You keep going, dig it in, trying to get under the skin, peel it away, cut the words off and leave them on the floor.

The death screams clobber you, _she's gone she's gone she's gone you lost her no one loves you she's gone_ , and you rub harder and faster until you start to breathe hard with the effort, what do you have to do to make it fucking stop?!

"WHOA holy shit holy shit what the _fuck_?" Flaca's voice is joined by others, and then someone is pulling your arms apart, trying to pin your wrist to the table until you let go of the scissors. You're fighting it but you aren't trying to stab anyone you just want it to stop, they don't seem to know that it hasn't yet. Your voice tumbles downhill like a hysterical avalanche, "No, no, no please just let me finish just let me get it off I have to get it the fuck off me, okay? Look, look, I'm fine, I'll stop as soon as it's off I promise, okay? If you just listen, okay?" _  
_

Your fingers are bent back and forced out of metal, the scissors out of your grasp, and it makes you cry with frustration. " _Please_." It doesn't come out dangerous. Or calm. It comes out like a little kid weeping. "Please just tell me where she is tell me if she's alive why won't any of you answer please that's all I want to know why won't you people tell me please please please..."

"Jesus Christ. Take her to psych."

There's blood on your arm and you think of the blood on the greenhouse floor, it's _still fucking there._ It makes you cry harder.

* * *

"Was this the first time you've self-harmed?"

"I told you, I wasn't harming myself. I was fixing a problem."

"Mmm-hmm. And you believed getting rid of only _this_ tattoo would fix a problem. Not the other ones you gave yourself?"

"No. Those were hers. I did those for her."

"And have you ever considered suicide - "

"I mean Alex. That's what you don't understand. It would all be fine if they would have just told me about Alex. I'm being perfectly rational here. It's not too much to ask for."

"The issue here isn't anything you've been told or not told, it's these delusions you've been having."

"I'm not deluded. Have you read Edgar Allen Poe? The Tell Tale Heart? It's a metaphor, and a metaphor isn't a delusion it's a literary device, okay? Okay?"

"A metaphor you had to literally remove from your body."

"Yes. Well, honestly. I think the fever contributed. But that's not insanity. It's a physical symptom. Look. Okay. Can you just tell me where Alex is? I can answer all your questions, I just want to know if Alex is alive."

"I've told you, _many_ times I have no idea who you're talking about."

"They know upstairs. Just ask, they know I'm not crazy, they know they refused to tell me."

"If they knew you weren't crazy, they wouldn't have sent you here."

"I just wanted it to _stop_. Believe me, that's the opposite of crazy, I just wanted...I needed it to stop."

...

"What are you...can you stop writing and just listen to me? Can you just find out about Alex for me. Any, anyone would want to know. Please? _Please_."

"These sessions aren't going to be productive, Miss Chapman, if you don't focus on your own recovery - "

"These sessions _can't_ be productive you've got me locked in a _goddamn_ _cage_."

"If you're going to get agitated - "

"I don't want another sedative, _no_ , I don't consent to that, I - wait, no where are you going wait wait _WAIT_ I don't want this I don't need to be here please _PLEASE just tell me if she's dead_."

* * *

They inject you, several times a day, and you hate it because these needles don't hurt. Sometimes, in between, you surface enough to think about this fucked up system but then whatever they're sending through your brain smothers your thoughts.

You try to grab onto something. You try to fight constant sleep.

At some point, when you've lost track of day or night or how long it's been and your tally marks are falling further behind, you figure it out:

If Alex was alive they would tell you.

Because then you wouldn't be crazy.

That would fix everything, you think, if you just knew you hadn't killed her. So if it was true, they'd tell you.

They start strapping you to the bed a few hours later, when they find you trying to dig through the mutilated skin on your arm.

Your skin is crawling with words. You chose the wrong ones to give yourself, you were far too generous, but you don't deserve Alex's words on your body. Not the good ones, anyway. _Naive asshole. Gross. Bitch. Manipulative cunt._ That's how you should have been branded. Maybe that would have drowned out Stella's goddamn gangster tattoo.

* * *

Alex is dead, you know that now, they would tell you if she wasn't and they've got you locked here so you won't find out.

You're certain of this. There is nothing left to ask for. There is no reason to go back.

So you let them drug you into oblivion. Sometimes it wears off and everything starts to hurt too much, so you make yourself scream and writhe against the straps and demand to be let out, which is the last thing what you want.

That makes them bring the drugs, which is the only thing you do.

* * *

That day in the warehouse, you know what happened.

The pin came out of the grenade.

Now you're in pieces.

Obliterated.

If they sedate you enough, maybe it's like you're not even here.

* * *

You wake up one morning - or, at least, after one ten hour stretch of sleep, time of day unknown - to find them taking the straps off.

"Wha...wha's happening?"

"Congratulations, crazy. Going back upstairs."

"What? No, no, I, I can't..." Panic shoots through your body, and the fact that you feel it so sharply is not a good sign. They've let the sedation wear off. "Are you going to give me something first? You are, right? Please? I don't have to go, I'm okay staying, you don't have to take me..."

The guard sighs through clenched teeth, like _he_ can't believe this either. "Orders from above. Now get up, get moving."

* * *

People stare when you walk by.

You know it's not because they're scared of you. Or, at least, not scared in the way you used to want.

You avoid mirrors. The worst isn't even what you've done to your body - the black scribbled torso, the mangled skin of your arm - it's the ghosts that live in your eyes. You can't connect with the image of your own face.

Looking at the gaping wounds actually reminds you who you are.

* * *

You've lost track of the days anyway, but once you're back upstairs you just pick up the tallies where you left off.

They took away your tattoo gun, obviously. Your fingernail has to do.

* * *

You spend most of your time curled up in the top bunk of the rooms, facing a wall and trying to turn yourself off even without the needle's assistance.

Lorna comes to find you there. "Uh...welcome back, Chapman!"

You don't answer.

"I just wanted to tell ya, thought you should know...Vause is alive."

You don't even roll away from the wall, but you bark out, " _Liar_."

It changes the air, and it takes a long moment before her voice reaches you again, small and nervous now. "N-no, really, I - "

"LIAR!" You punctuate the word by smacking your palm against the wall.

Lorna's words unspool rapidly, "I swear, a few weeks ago..."

You put your hands over your ears and start yelling, "Get out get out get the fuck away from me _GO_."

They're making her say that. Now it's not enough to withhold the truth, they're actively lying. Don't want you going crazy again. That's the only reason they let you back up here.

You won't let them fool you.

Your arm whispers mockingly, _Trust no bitch._

* * *

(You go out to the greenhouse and check for the blood, make sure it was always real.)

* * *

"Chapman, visitor."

You think about refusing, but you should at least tell Cal to give up. Or do what he wants, but leave you out of it. Flaca already tried to fill you in, said she kept it going. You'd ignored and ignored and ignored her and when she wouldn't go away you snapped that she could have it, but leave you the fuck alone.

You drag yourself into the visitation room, vaguely thinking of Cal going back to your parents with an assessment of your crazy level, when suddenly you see Alex sitting at a table.

Your body jolts to a stop and you inhale a stuttering, whimpering breath, then close your eyes because _no_ , this isn't real, maybe that's okay because they'll drag you back to psych again but this hurts too much this is _too much_.

Then, "Piper?"

At the sound of her voice, your eyes open out of instinct.

The left side of Alex's face is mottled by a scar, starting above the corner of her eye and meandering down to her jaw. There are lighter, faded scars on her neck, too. She's standing up now, concerned, and when she takes a few steps forward her right side seems too stiff.

This makes you believe in her.

"In or out, inmate?" A guard barks pointedly at you, and you make yourself walk forward, toward the table. Alex rocks forward, hesitant, not sure what to do, but you sink shakily into the seat at the table, unable to look away from her.

She gets back to the chair across from yours and sits. She gives you an awkward smile. "Hey."

You disintegrate.

Your face is in your hands, throat working furiously to swallow sobs. You're whole body is shaking.

"Pipes..." Her voice stumbles. "Can you look at me?"

The slightest note of fear there slices you, so you make yourself look up. "How are you here?"

"I'm still on your visitation list. I tried to come see you a month ago, but they said you couldn't have visitors and not to bother coming back...so I wrote Lorna. She told me what happened."

"But, but, I mean..." Too much of this doesn't make sense. It doesn't seem real. "Why didn't you come sooner?" You thought she was _dead_.

Her eyebrows draw together. "I was in the _hospital_ , Pipes." She points to her face. "Believe it or not, this is a few surgeries deep."

"How are you _out_?"

"Compassionate release. So they say. Really, it just doesn't bode well when a CO they hired attacks you in the middle of a guard walk out. Didn't want me talking to press."

You can't help it, you cover your face again. Trying to hold it together. It's too much, her being here. You wonder if her scar screams at her.

Then, hesitantly, she says, "It helped me make a big fucking stink over you being in psych. My complaints to the warden have a lot of weight so...keep that in mind."

You stare at her, stricken. "Why would you do that?"

She looks like she might be about to say something flippant, but when she meets your eyes, the instinct fades and her face tightens. "You know why."

There are no words big enough. You can't see a way back to her.

Why the hell is she here? How can she stand it?

When you look again, Alex is staring at your arm, face pale. "Jesus, Pipes...Lorna said you sliced open your arm but I didn't think... _Jesus_."

"I...you never saw it, but Stella..." A shadow passes over Alex's face, automatically, and fuck you hate this you hate it so much. "She gave me a tattoo. And I couldn't...I couldn't get away from it, it felt like such shit, I just wanted it off me. I needed it gone."

"Yeah..." Alex's fingers come up to touch the fault line of her left cheek. "I get that feeling."

The crying starts again, with no real transition, and this time it threatens to take over. You don't know what else to do. It hits you with sudden clarity that you can never have her again. She can never love you again.

"Pipes, you have to stop doing this when I can't touch you." Her voice is so gentle you can practically feel it destroying some of the pieces that are left of you, so when you lift your head out of your hands to look at her you're not prepared for the question that comes. "Did you sleep with her?"

You say "yes" like it's the smallest, most trembling bullet.

Alex nods stoically, but you see the hurt leak into her eyes. You don't want to put it there, you don't want to still have the power to hurt her. You don't want power to do anything.

She lifts her eyes to the ceiling, like you've seen her do too many times to get herself under control around you.

Finally, she nods a little, like she already knows, but then whispers almost desperately, "Why?"

"I don't know." Your voice is soaked with tears. "I don't know why about any of it. I think...I think I'm just a really... _really_ bad person."

"You aren't though," she says, and it almost makes you angry because _how_ can she possibly say that.

"You should have kept hurting me. The second you stopped..." Your voice turns weightless. "...I started hurting you."

Silence curls around the two of you, and it strikes you again how helpless this is. You are both scarred, and Alex's are just as much your fault as your own. There is no way back.

"Are you leaving?"

She startles slightly. "You...want me to go?"

"No, I meant...because of Kubra." You physically shudder at yourself, because you didn't listen to her, didn't let yourself see how afraid she was, used it as an excuse to walk away. "You didn't get a chance to run before, but now - "

"Kubra's dead."

"What?"

"As soon as Lolly saw him in the greenhouse, I guess Aydin ran. Drove his car away from the prison before anyone showed up. Kubra was waiting for him somewhere, I guess Aydin shot him. Probably for documents or money, who the fuck knows. But they caught him. He's in jail and Kubra's dead."

Fresh tears well in your eyes, _relieved_ ones now, and they slip down your face even though you don't deserve them. You told her it was nothing. You shouldn't get to feel relieved.

"So you're okay?" you choke out.

"I'm safe," she says, which is a different thing. Then, "Are _you_ okay?"

"Why do you _care_?" The question is shot through with panic. "You shouldn't, just stop it, Alex..." It's the first time you've said her name the whole visit, and your face crumples. "I thought you were _dead_ , and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I just want you to hate me, okay? Please just do that."

"Pipes, you're scaring me."

You laugh once, wildly. That's what you wanted, right? To scare people?

" _Why_?" Your voice is an animal whine. Something wounded. "You should have left me in psych, you should want me to suffer."

"I love you." The edges of the words are finally, finally brushing up against anger. "And I don't know what the fuck that means for us anymore, now, other than that I still don't want to hurt you." She draws a deep, staggered breath, and her whole face softens. She reaches out, fingers covertly brushing the very edge of your newly scarring skin, with such tenderness you're afraid it might kill you when she moves them away. "And I don't want you hurting yourself."

You make a noise, like a broken down sob.

Alex's eyes are shining, but she runs a hand through her hair and says lightly, "What was the tattoo."

You feel a flash of embarrassment, and it's the easiest feeling you've had in months. "Trust no bitch."

Alex actually _snickers_. "And you didn't let me _see_ that? Goddamn it, Pipes."

Your eyes find hers and hold on. "I love you, too."

Amusement dissolves, Alex looks away. "Do you?" she asks, tight and pained. "Even if I'm not the hot, badass drug dealer you fell for?" It's a shot, the first deliberate one she's made, and it lands. You're glad, in a way. Then, Alex's face twists into a smile full of cracks. "I'm not even the _hot_ , anymore."

Your stomach rolls sickeningly, you're picturing her on the floor of the greenhouse while a shovel cracks the bones of her face. You blink out more tears and tell her the truth, "You're beautiful."

But you don't say what else you're thinking, that you'll never be able to look at her face without remembering that you did it to her.

You love her, but it hurts to look at her. You need her, but you don't deserve to get what you need. There is no way through this. Her name is on your ribs and chest four different times, always when you were most out of your head, when you couldn't think of anything else to put. You'd convinced yourself those had hurt more than the others.

"I fucked myself up so bad, Al," you say shakily. Glancing at your arm, you add, "Not just this, but..." With a quick check of the guards, you lift up your shirt.

Her eyes widen, looking at just a small section of the strange, scribbled tapestry. But all she does is tug down the neck of her shirt, exposing more shovel scars. "I've got some of that going on. A little less of a serial killer vibe, but..."

You look at the scars and think that you'll never be able to run from them without running from _her_.

She should be the one who gets to run.

The visitation time is surely nearly up, and you blurt out nervously, "Do you think you'll come back?"

Alex looks surprised. "Do you _want_ me to?"

" _Yes_ ," the answer comes immediately. "But I don't see why you would."

She takes a moment to answer. "I wanted you in the hospital. Felt fucking stupid for it, but. I wanted you. All the time. And then I was just going to come here because no matter what else happened, I didn't like you thinking I could be dead. And then Lorna told me what happened." Her voice falters, played out fear washing over her expression. "And then I just wanted know you're okay."

"I'm so sorry."

"I know."

"Just...so, so sorry, Alex."

"I know you are, Pipes."

You're grateful she doesn't tell you it's okay.

The visitation ends, then, and fear fills your head like a fog. You're afraid for her to leave, afraid you'll wake up and realize none of this was real.

You both stand up. Not sure what to do.

"C'mere," she says finally, like she's giving you something. You melt against her, so grateful, and press your face into her shoulder and leave it wet.

"Hey..." she grabs your wrist when you pull away, peering down at the scar on your arm, at the places where you keep picking so they stay open. "I mean it. Stop doing this to yourself. Trust me on this, Pipes...gets better when you let that shit scar."

You nod. You can't run from the scars, and you shouldn't get to.

But they don't hurt forever.

You still think _maybe_ (maybe maybe maybe maybe) yours should.

But Alex doesn't.

And that's a start.

* * *

 _A/N: This was kind of a frenzy of feelings and writing. It's obviously not what I actually want for next season, with Alex getting out, but other than that...it's what I want for Piper. I don't even know if some of this made sense. Like I said, it was rushed._

 _I'd loved to hear what you think of this, and I don't want to get into a huge season three discussion in the comments (doing a lot of that on Tumblr, feel free to wander over), but I'm still trying to work through things in my head. I think I want to do another Young Blood sequel as soon as I have time, kind of lose myself in that world again for awhile, and then go back to maybe working through some canon stuff in a more focused, planned way than this._


End file.
